The Google Social Graph API

From the site blurb:  “With so many websites to join, users must decide where to invest significant time in adding their same connections over and over. For developers, this means it is difficult to build successful web applications that hinge upon a critical mass of users for content and interaction. With the Social Graph API, developers can now utilize public connections their users have already created in other web services. It makes information about public connections between people easily available and useful.”  Watch the video too – more info here

Microsoft LISTAS

Listas is a tool for the creation, management and sharing of lists, notes, favorites, and more. It allows you to quickly and easily edit lists, share them with others for reading or wiki-style editing, and discover the public lists of other users.  We encourage you to try using it for meeting notes, bookmarks, shopping lists, to plan a night out, or whatever other creative ways you can think of.

Windows Live ID or Passport account needed.

WEBSITE TOOLS INSTANT TEST WIZARD

From Site:

Test the performance and availability of your website from 11 locations around the world. Simply click on the button for the test that you would like to run and input your info. This is the only testing wizard online that gives you results from around the world – FOR FREE

Here

Technorati tags: web tools, web test

Visual search tool

oSkope is a neat little visual search tool which will allow you to search and organise items from various sources, such as ebay, flickr, youtube etc.  The results are presented in an intuative way and you can arrange them in a number of ways such as a graph, a stack, a pile or as a list.  I like the stack as it feels like you are browsing through photographs of things.  Very nice and worthwhile service.

Technorati tags: visual search, oskope, intuative search

QUECHUP social networking

Well, I stumbled apon another social networking site called Quechup which came to me as an invite.  I was talking to the friend that sent it to me and they were telling me that he never actually sent out any “invites” … it turns out that as part of their registration process Quechup will helpfully offer to search your mailbox to find any contacts who are currently on Quechup and add them for you.  However, it also then sends out an invite to all your contacts in such a way that it looks like you personally sent the mail.  Two things strike me about this, firstly that’s just spamming by another means and pretty sneaky.  Secondly, who the HE*L gives out their mailbox password to a random WEB site as part of registration …. have people learned nothing about WEB security !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have not read the Quechup T&C or privacy agreement nor have I tried this myself, but I can’t think of anything which would make me feel safe about giving my mail password over to anyone.

Technorati tags: quechup, web 2.0, social networks

WEB strategy – Twitter under the microscope

This is an interesting article on Twitter, [a WEB service which lets you post items of micro data about yourself to let your friends know what you are doing, as well as keep a track on what your friends are up to].  I have been tweeting on twitter for a while now (does that make me an early adopter????? probably not !!) and I still found this article very interesting.  Although it is aimed at the Web Strategist there are some good summaries and concepts about why & how twitter should be used and where it could all be going.

Technorati tags: twitter, web 2.0, social networks

An Inspirational Facebook application

The Inspire Me Facebook application does what it says on the tin … your friends can send you words of insipation to help you through your day, or to do those tasks, or to cheer you up.  This actually seems like an interesting idea with some potental !!!

Technorati tags: Inspire, Inspire me, Inspirational

Let your bluetooth device find Facebook friends

Using bluetooth and Facebook technology researchers at Bath University have designed a way to build new friendship networks.  By installing a Facebook app called Cityware users can track real world encounters via their bluetooth devices.  It appears to be part of a wider project backed by Nokia, HP Labs and Vodaphone.

The system works with 4 parts, firstly a Facebook account then Cityware application followed by your bluetooth devices and then the Cityware nodes.  These nodes have only currently been installed in Bath, University College London, the University of California in San Diego, with more nodes going online in Sweden, Hong Kong and Sydney.

These nodes (computers) scan for bluetooth enabled devices and send that data back to the Cityware servers to compare the unique bluetooth IDs against known Facebook accounts.  The next time you access Facebook you will be shown other users that your device detected.

Cityware state that “The node sits in the environment and records everyone’s unique Bluetooth ID. Cityware itself doesn’t know your name, or who you are.”, Dr Kostakos, research associate at the University of Bath.

Dr Kostakos makes some other very interesting comments, “Networks are everywhere – social and digital.  The really nice thing about Bluetooth is that when you are walking down the street, although you are not talking to anyone, your Bluetooth device can be talking to other devices.”

“Most people you bump into or see regularly have made information about themselves available publicly online.  But the Internet is such a big place that it’s difficult to find contextual information about who someone is, where they are etc.”

The tool lets find out if any of the people you bump into is a Cityware user and has a Facebook profile, in which case you can choose to add that person to your friend list.

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Thinking about this started to give me a headache, I mean having my Bluetooth device allow other people to find me just seemed so un-nerving.  Similarly the thought that really, your locations could be recorded on a server somewhere was also a bit disconcerting.  However, regardless of how we choose to meet a new friend or a familiar stranger is having your bluetooth device do the introdcution any more dangerous than exchanging details the old fasion way?  Probably not and it could be argued that it was in some ways safer.  It will be very interesting to watch this technology develop over time but at the moment my Bluetooth is still OFF. 

The original article can be found on the BBC WEB site here

Technorati tags: cityware, bluetooth, facebook, social networks, social networking

Test Shows 41% Of Facebook Users Expose Themselves To Strangers

However interesting this post is about the ease at which some people will part with personal information in the social networking community of Facebook (and no doubt alternative sites) the title alone is worth a mention 

Microsoft dashboard for LIVE services

Microsoft have started to test a new dashboard interface for their Live services (link is home.live.com) where a Windows Live user can get an overview of their personal Live account, i.e. emails – MSN contacts – blog postings and try out other online Microsoft services.

I have just logged in and given this a spin, and well, like any dashboard it was actually good to be able to see a top level view of my services but I was disapointed at the experiences in that when you click to view a service there is no way “back” to the dashboard, other than pressing the browser back button.  Well, that works so whats the problem ??? and isn’t that just a niggle rather than a complaint ???… well to me it does not project an intergrated all-in-one experience which is kind of what I would expect.  Plus if you try and edit your settings then pressing the back button does not return you to the dashboard…. I actually had to go through the history and select the “sign in” page (interestingly I never had to sign in again but at least I got to the dashboard).

What I did like was the fact Windows Live services are linked on the back end by a common contacts database.  So I can post a picture on Windows Live Spaces, its blog – and picture sharing site, and send a notice to anyone on my instant messaging contact list.  Plus it is actually very neat to have a portal view … not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination but as Windows Live has about 300 million users who frequently log in to IM or EMail then this can only be a very good move.

If only it tied into non-Microsoft services like GMail, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc 

Technorati tags: microsoft dashboard, dashboard, windows live

Passion-Centric or Object-Oriented community sites

Social networking sites are huge … how obviously is that statement !!!!   but I came across another side to this upsurge of sites which are known as “Passion-Centric” or “Object-Oriented”.  Lets paint the picture: “A San Francisco native who loves the beach, parks, running and dancing, Marco has easily made connections over the Internet, racking up 5,200 on his profile. Not bad for a 4-year-old Miniature Schnauzer.”

Marco is just one of thousands of dogs with a WEB profile on Dogster.com – which is simply an online community featuring pet photos, pet videos, diaries, tips etc etc etc.  Its sister site, catster.com, is the same thing for cat lovers and apparently pets are not the only thing targetted … sneakerplay.com is for, well, sneakers (trainers, runnng shoes .. whatever).

These are places for people with particular passions to share that passion and have a bit of fun … not just swap names, photos or “collect” friends.

I’m sure there are other passions represented …. but you may have to clear your browser cache afterwards !! 

Technorati tags: dogster.com, caster.com, passion-centric

Spock.com

A new web search service has launched, but this one doesn’t provide results for the entire web—it only provides results about people. Spock.com went into public beta today after several months of private testingand prides itself in providing the “richest people search experience on the web.”

This may sound creepy at first, but users are able to manage thier own profile pages and also import details from a number of other places, such as LinkedIn and MySpace as well as tags, pictures and contact lists.  So why is this different from say MySpace or Facebook?  Well, it seems that the general public can also tag your pictures and put information in about you, and as Wikipedia has learned this sort of Openness some members may choose to vandalise profiles with damaging or false information.  Spock say that information will be checked, but it is unclear how.

They claim to have already indexed 100 million people, with a new million each day and it is fair to say that a high percentage of these people will not be managing their own profiles.

Technorati tags: Spock, people searching, find me, web 2.0, community sites

Slap in the Facebook

This makes for some very interesting reading on the topic of socal networks.

Technorati tags: Facebook, WEB2.0, Social networks

Web2.0 fun

Want a WEB2.0 name — then this should help

Technorati tags: web2.0, web2.0 name generator, web2.0 site name

BBC steps closer to offering Internet TV

It looks as though the BBC will continue their listen again radio service, where you can hear radio shows up to 7 days after they air, with an on demand Internet TV service for ALL BBC TV shows. A select number of shows have been available online for a while now, but this promises to be much, much bigger.

Channel 4 (also in the UK) tried something similar but a lot of their content was not free, so you would have been just as well to record the show yourself, BBC however say that their content will be free although you will only be able to download a show up to 7 days after it has been on and then only store it on your HDD for up to 30days.

They are calling it iPlayer and a final decision on the service will be made before May 2nd 2007 after public consultation.